6 Percent of Drivers Kill Animals: DNews Nuggets

6 Percent of Drivers Kill Animals: In a roadside experiment, NASA engineer Mark Rober found that 60 out of 1,000 drivers veer intentionally out of their way to kill an animal. Rober did the experiment by alternatively placing a rubber animal — a turtle, a snake or a spider — and a leaf as a control object on the shoulder of a road. Next, he watched the reactions from 1,000 drivers. Six percent of the drivers veered out of their lane and over onto the shoulder in order to hit the rubber toy, which as far as they knew, was a living animal. Of those drivers, 89 percent were in SUVs. Rober and Gizmodo Jesus Diaz wonder what motivates these people. Diaz writes, “…their empathy circuits must be pretty broken. Personally, I wouldn’t like to be friends with any of them.” I agree. via Gizmodo